I was intrigued by the suggestion of an alt.sport.
hockey.hartford-whalers, so I checked the Usenet archives that I normally
read and found a group of lists that begin alt.sports.hockey.  At this
point, they give you a choice of leagues (nhl, echl, etc.) and then, at
least under nhl, give you a choice of teams.  The few that I looked at
had very few postings, but it's one more place to look for hockey postings.